Omigosh! I almost forgot! The whole reason that I opened up my blog in the first place wasn’t to post the Erin poem at all, but this quote I found yesterday in Tin House, volume 8, number 4. Because it suits the Agnes de Mille post I wrote a few days ago, and also some of the posts before that. This is it:

(It’s from an interview with John Banville. Who apparently is a famous novelist. I haven’t read any of his books. He is appeallingly (no typo) arrogant throughout most of the interview, talks about being dissatisfied with previous books, and this is what they end the article with.)

“Jennifer Levasseur/Kevin Rabalais: You’ve talked about disliking your books. Can the artist hope for more than failure?

JB: As Beckett said, ‘Fail again. Fail better.’ It’s all we can do. Everybody fails. The acknowledgment of that failure is very important. Perfection is not of this world. It’s the quality of the failure that counts.”

I like this because it resolves something for me about this point of view, namely: if all we can hope to do is fail, why try very hard? I do find the notion “perfection is impossible” both comforting and freeing in my own work, so I’d like to be able to reconcile it with honest effort and a thing to strive for. But this is why to try: the quality of the failure counts. My next play won’t be perfect, but it’ll be a better failure. That’s worth working for. Thanks, Sam and John.

Quick! Poll: it’s 8:30am, I’m getting over a cold, and I haven’t slept all night. I have a lunch date at noon and a date date tonight at 9:30. I also have an hour or two of work to do to prepare for next week’s fundraiser. Do I a) go back to bed and do some more trying-to-sleep for a couple hours? or do I b) resign myself to skipping a night of sleep and maybe nap in the afternoon, after my lunch date?

decisions, decisions.
Alissa